State government dumps controversial housing policy

The planning minister, Brad Hazzard says a controversial public housing legislation had to be scrapped, because it was destroying communities.

The policy had been introduced by the previous government, in a bid to boost affordable housing across the state, including the north coast.

A 28-unit public housing development at Chatham, near Taree, was highly criticised by residents.

Mr Hazzard says affordable housing is important, but this was not the way to achieve it.

"The government supports affordable housing; we want to see more of it," he said.

"But unfortunately the way state Labor set up this deal with developers was that they could come into areas and override local council's controls, local community expectation, and whack in massive developments where there might have only been a few houses before.

"It just was destroying communities and not actually producing affordable housing.

"There was no evidence to say that people who actually needed the housing were moving into it."

Mr Hazzard says scrapping the policy is a huge benefit for mid north coast communities.

"I've travelled the entire state and listened to communities across New South Wales who are absolutely ropable about what state Labor had allowed to happen to them.

"It was basically a back-door method of overriding local community planning controls.

"What we have established now is an end to that arrangement, and a new taskforce will be set up to find a fair dinkum way of delivering affordable housing into our communities, but one that doesn't steam roll over people."